Saturday, September 13, 2008

There have been quite a few Sarah Palin stories coming out that I have been reading, however I really had a chance to comment on. So it is time for another Sarah Palin Daily Headliners post.

First, Talking Points Memo has a great roundup on the Sarah Palin scandal Troopergate. This is everything you need to know about the scandal of Sarah Palin using her power in the governor's office for the personal use of eliminating enemies that have fallen out of her favor. This is an excellent resource to look into the back story on this scandal.

Alaska Lawmakers Vote to Subpoena Todd Palin: Alaskan lawmakers voted Friday to issue a subpoena to Todd Palin, the husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, in an escalation of the Troopergate scandal. The subpoena was one of 14 approved by the Judiciary Committee of the State Senate, in a vote of 3 to 2, in a joint hearing with the House Judiciary Committee. Senator Charlie Huggins, from Palin's home town of Wasilla, voted in favor of the subpoena, stating that he wanted "to hear the truth" in this scandal. We've got the beginnings of a nuclear showdown between the Alaskan state legislature, and the governor's office, with the McCain campaign sitting in the middle, trying to stuff this scandal before Election Day. The problem for Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign is that this scandal is still not going away for them. TPMhasevenmoredetailsonTroopergate.

Palin didn't fire Monegan--he quit: According to this upcoming September 22, 2008 New Yorker story, Sarah Palin now claims that she did not fire Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan for refusing to fire her brother-in-law in the Troopergate scandal. Instead, Palin claims that Monegan quit for failing to combat alcohol abuse in rural Alaska:

[Palin] said that one of her goals had been to combat alcohol abuse in rural Alaska, and she blamed Commissioner Monegan for failing to address the problem. That, she said, was a big reason that she’d let him go—only, by her account, she didn’t fire him, exactly. Rather, she asked him to drop everything else and single-mindedly take on the state’s drinking problem, as the director of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. “It was a job that was open, commensurate in salary pretty much—ten thousand dollars less”—but, she added, Monegan hadn’t wanted the job, so he left state service; he quit.

McCain campaign lies on extent of Palin's Iraq trip: The Boston Globe is reporting that Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin's 2007 visit to Iraq "consisted of a brief stop at a border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait," even though McCain campaign aids claimed that Palin visited Kuwait, a "military outpost" inside Iraq, and an "excursion into the Iraq battle zone. It appears that the McCain campaign was trying to embellish Palin's Kuwait trip, from visiting Alaskan National Guard troops, to a major dog-and-pony show presenting Sarah Palin's extensive foreign policy credentials on Iraq policy.

Sarah Palin's book banning credentials: Steve Benen, who now writes for the Washington Monthly, has a great round-up on Sarah Palin's book banning scandal. During her interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin rejected the notion that she sought to ban books from the Wasilla Public Library, saying that "It's an old wives' tale." Benen reports that the Associated Press,Time, and ABC News all confirm that then-mayor Sarah Palin approached Wasilla's head librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, asking about banning library books on three occasions. Palin then fired Emmons, because Palin didn't feel she had the librarian's "full support." Emmons was then reinstated after a public outcry. Again, there is this pattern of Sarah Palin using her political power to destroy personal and political enemies.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, discretionary spending "pays for activities such as defense, transportation, national parks, and foreign aid. This type of spending is controlled by annual appropriations, meaning that legislators and policymakers can decide how much money can go into which programs. These programs can be cut. Mandatory spending, or entitlements, "consists overwhelmingly of benefit programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid." Congress determines the spending for these programs by setting rules for eligibility, formulas, and parameters, rather than by appropriating specific dollar amounts to these programs. Spending for mandatory programs cannot be cut, however the rules can be changed for reducing money spent on mandatory programs. Palin believed that veterans benefit programs were entitlement programs, not realizing that they were discretionary spending programs. Gibson asked if Palin would "take the military off the table," making Palin believe that the military spending was also an entitlement. Palin had no clue as to what she was getting into when talking about cutting spending from the federal budget. Again, it shows how unqualified Sarah Palin is for the vice presidency.

According to ThinkProgress, “Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent.” Factcheck.org reports that Alaska produced "14 percent of all the oil from U.S. wells last year." I guess Sarah Palin doesn't understand her energy statistics.